5 years ago I had something similar happen, only it was a blacked out Apache that was hovering above my property. It hovered for several minutes above
me as I watered my garden. I always wondered what that was about.

Unless he's doing a DEA mission and needs to see plants with IR or something.

Even on one of those missions, the pilot always has game plan in his head as how to handle an emergency. In a helicopter things go bad quickly. You
need to handle emergencies within seconds or your autorotation outcome is not good. That's why you are seeing military helos go to twin engine. It
gives you a few additional seconds to think rather than react in a emergency.

A helicopter is the only machine that it's health is evaluated by how it shakes...go figure!

originally posted by: starswift
Reminds me of once I drove to a natural area at night for no particular reason.
There was a Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion that did overflights of the area from a local military airstrip, for whatever reasons.
When I got out of the car I heard the distinctive wump wump wump very loud coming directly toward me at about 300 feet up.
I thought "#, how do they even know I am here and what is the reason the are zeroing in on me"? I turned of the car lights and turned off the engind
and waited, The 'copter hovered over me for about 5-10 minutes. My best guess is that they were using me for target practice during some simulation.
Must have had FLEER as well. Commonly these types of copters have electronics eaves dropping equipment and I suspect they are mapping communications
networks or picking up communications of interest to the military which would technically be illegal as it is surveillance of the civilian population
during peacetime and not under martial law.

The CH-53 is the loudest helo in service and couldn't sneak up on a deaf person. However, it is a great $h!t hauler for the Marines and Navy.
On the other hand, the USAF version has all the bells and buzzers that you mentioned.

The difficult thing to know is what are they up to. I had two clowns, in my unit, that liked to take picture of kids in "lover's lane" in Benson,
Arizona on Friday and Saturday nights. They would process the pictures and post them on the duty board. They would also fly low over I-40 without
lights, then turn on all of his lights and zoom out vertically. They would watch the news for days to see how many UFO reports they could generate.

I was very surprised to find this thread today as I also live in the middle of wine country and noticed a cobra airframe at 7:30 this morning going
what seemed to be the same heading as a group of two Chinooks on Sunday. I have lived in the area for 6 years and have not witnessed this type of
activity before so it definitely had my attention. I assumed it had something to do with JH. It is worth noting that Travis Air Force Base is within
40miles of us but only usual activity I notice seems to be some form of c-17 training/testing but they always do that over Solano County and not
really visible from Napa area. Their headings were not going to or from the AFB. Thanks for starting a thread BS, will be interesting to see if
anyone else has additional information.

That's actually relatively close, im roughly 30 miles from Edwards Air Force Base and see a lot of flight activity. I had a friend point out to me
something a couple of years ago, he said if you look in the sky towards any base, you can notice how they have no "contrails" over them, ( I think the
person said it was military air space)

Interesting info, I was parked in what probably was used as a lovers lane when that happened.
Oddly, a year or so later I had a similar experience where what I thought was this helicopter flew up over me,
I figure again "great, how do they know I was here" when I was in the middle of nowhere on a security patrol. I figured it was a spotlight and that
perhaps there were prison escapees from the state prison on the lam that were being searched for.
As it hovered overhead I realized it was completely silent and at that point thought was " Oh!, a UFO" ; )
a reply to: buddah6

On a windy day those LITTLE BIRDS are VERY quiet on approach if the pilot masks it well .
I'll NEVER figure out WHY the Army bowed to friggin LADYBIRD Johnson and didn't keep that LOACH for full service missions instead of that Jet
Ranger.

When this guy was doing the UFO thing we were not flying helos. I'm sure that it wouldn't have been silent either.

Our commander grounded him for the remainder of annual training and made him sit at the end of the runway to insure no jackrabbits inadvertently
crossed the runway. His radio callsign was changed to reflect his extraterrestrial misdeeds...lol. It was the most exciting thing to happen that year
(1978).

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
On a wind day those LITTLE BIRDS are VERY quiet on apporach if the pilot masks it well .
I'll NEVER figure out WHY the Army bowed to friggin LADYBIRD Johnson and didn't keep that LOACH for full service missions instead of that Jet
Ranger.

Ladybird was on the board of directors at Bell Helicopters.

The loach never sounded like a helicopter anyway. My wife describes it as sounding like a Singer sewing machine. She thought it was funny watching
me get in it and said it was like I was putting it on. It was her running joke as the army puts the biggest pilots in their smallest helicopters.
It's a ARMY THANG!

You got to be a NIGHTSTALKER?
Did you have more combat training on the ground than the average rotorhead?

I flew the OH-6a in 1972-73 Vietnam. That was 13 years before SOAR was invented. My loach wasn't as good as the MH-6s used by the 160th. My loach
(OH-6A) only had 312 HP verses 450 with the MH-6D used by SOAR.

My second tour in Vietnam was an aviation assignment and the first was as an infantry platoon leader with the 82nd ABN. Later, I went on to fly OV-1s
in a NG MI unit until a training accident ended things for me. Nightstalker...NO Picture taker...Yes. If you want to see some angry bad guys just
take their picture!

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